


The Memory Always Lies

by StuntMuppet



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Adventure, Gen, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2009-12-09
Updated: 2009-12-08
Packaged: 2017-10-04 07:05:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StuntMuppet/pseuds/StuntMuppet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor must use the Chameleon Arch to avoid an imminent threat, leaving Liz, Benton, and the Brigadier with a mess and a mystery on their hands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Which Miss Shaw Contemplates Certainty

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place sometime between The Ambassadors of Death and Inferno, after the TARDIS console has been removed. Uses TV canon rather than book canon with regards to the Chameleon Arch. Further A/Ns at the end of the chapter, on account of spoilers.

It was going to be, Liz reflected as she hung up her coat, another peculiar day.

Strange, how she had already adjusted the baseline between normal and not-normal, how fast she'd incorporated it all. She even dealt with the TARDIS fairly gracefully (if she did say so herself) when the Doctor asked her to help him remove the console. She had learned to cope with a suddenly deeper and wider and fuller cosmos than she'd ever known; what was a little impossible physics to top it all off?

And yet this most recent development, right on the heels of her introduction to dimensional transcendence, managed to uniquely unsettle.

Someone knocked three times, precisely, on the laboratory door.

"Come in, Corporal." She didn't look up; she didn't have to. The Brigadier sent him down every so often, if his section had no pressing assignments that morning, and he would greet her the same way whether she said hello to him or not.

"Morning, Miss Shaw!" And just like every morning, his voice was far too cheery.

"Good morning, Corporal." Liz had been trying to look at his face as little as possible. On a conscious level, she knew she had little reason to avoid him; he was just like any other errand boy that Lethbridge-Stewart sent her way when he needed something. She had made quite certain of that.

But certainty, it turned out, could be a funny thing. It was easy to be certain when, say, a two-and-a-half-meter sentient reptilian was breathing on your face, because then you had two options: your senses were deceiving you or the reptile-thing was real. But when you heard that familiar voice speaking the entirely wrong words, and that familiar face wearing the entirely wrong smile….

She could not dispel the suspicion that it was all some colossal joke at her expense, that any moment he was going to laugh, clap her on the shoulder, and chide her for being so easily taken in. "I take it the Brigadier has paperwork for me?"

"Just the follow-up on yesterday's specimens, miss." He stood beside her now, a few file folders tucked under one arm. Back straight, uniform neat. And smiling, of course, however faintly. "Something about an…" He opened one folder, browsed through the papers inside. "…Amnexis IV deep-space monitor, whatever that happens to be?"

"That's the one." Liz removed the files from his open hands before he could read any further. "Let him know I've got them. I should have them ready by this afternoon."

"Right away, Miss Shaw." He turned sharply on heel and walked away. She thought she could hear him beginning to whistle.

Liz shook her head as the door shut behind him. A few more days; that would be all she needed to re-adjust her frame of reference. But a peculiar few days they'd be.  
\---

 

**One Month and Three Days Ago**

The police found the thing about a month ago, or so the reports said. She suspected some slight exaggeration on the Police Department's part – their discovery looked far too fresh to be that old – but it took some time to work its way to UNIT.

It had been found underneath a dock, crumpled like a doll into the most unnatural of positions. Its spindly limbs were pale and bloodless; its eye sockets were empty.

Aside from the eyes, it seemed a fairly ordinary dead body. But then the city coroner examined it and found it still had a pulse – no other vital signs, and it was completely unresponsive to any stimulus, but a pulse nonetheless. After that, it wasn't long before the thing was shunted over to UNIT, specifically to the laboratories.

And it also wasn't long before the Doctor pulled aside the shroud, stared at the body for a bit, and said "Oh."  
\---

**Today**

For all the Doctor's worry, the cosmos seemed relatively quiet – the samples on her desk these past few weeks had been, for the most part, space debris. Discarded probes, bits that looked like they had once been part of an exoskeleton, that sort of thing. Apparently, no one could be bothered to muster up an invasion force.

A lazy day in space. She had a bit of a chuckle in spite of herself.

The only absolutely mandatory order of business for the day was checking the reading from the transmitter she'd placed on that body again, and while she understood the necessity of doing so, the transmitter had recorded no motion as of yet. Again, the Doctor's concern and hurry seemed to be for naught; they really _could_ have taken a little time to dispose of the thing at the beginning, and they wouldn't have had to go to any of this trouble in the first place.

But no matter. What was done was done, and the important thing was that she had the lab to herself for perhaps two, three more weeks, and she was going to make the most of it while it lasted.

Someone knocked on the door again – and again, three times precisely.

"What is it, Corporal?" What could he possibly need now? He was on duty; shouldn't the Brigadier be keeping him busy?

"Sorry to disturb you again, Miss Shaw." He only peeked through the door this time. "But the Brigadier said he needed to speak to you when you had a moment."

"Tell him I'm right in the middle of something, Smith. I'll be with him shortly."

"No trouble, miss." The door shut; she'd never looked up during the whole conversation.

She waited for a moment, just to make sure that he wasn't coming right back in, before she went to check on the transmitter. Not that he'd recognize it, but you never could tell; he might feel the need to ask what she was doing, and she hadn't yet come up with a suitable lie.   
\---

**One Month, Two-and-a-half Days Ago**

It took a few tries to get the Doctor to explain himself; one look at the body set him searching the TARDIS console for something, and he couldn't be bothered to answer questions then.

He relented when she flatly refused to cut the auxiliary power until she knew what she was helping him do. Evidently in no mood to argue, he began a distracted monologue.

"They don't have a name for themselves as a species," The Doctor explained, rummaging around in every panel the TARDIS console possessed. "I heard about them on Delta Two; they called them the Vadiil." He opened what appeared to be a cabinet door and disappeared momentarily into the base of the console. "Roughly translates to 'other-men'."

"And?" Liz asked, kneeling down so she could see under the console. "What about them? Why the panic?"

"No home world. No sense of identity as a species. The body is merely a shell to support the intelligence. Ability to separate its intelligence from its body, form a sort of free-floating, seeing, hearing mind. And I am not _panicking_, Liz."

"A free-floating mind, Doctor?"

"Well, yes. It takes a few variable somatic cells with it, of course, to propel itself and observe the outside world – that's why the eyes are gone. They're not really eyes; they're a portable observation unit." He shut the cabinet door and shook his head. "No good. It must still be inside the TARDIS."

"But how are the neural cells able to continue functioning without an energy source? And what exactly are you looking for, Doctor?"

But she'd lost him by then. He retrieved the TARDIS key from inside his pocket, seemed to realize something, then put it back. "Help me disconnect these cables. I'm going to need to wire them back inside."

"I thought everything you needed for transport was on the console."

"Oh, it's not transport I'm looking for, Liz. No, I'm going to have to redirect the power back into the main structure. The console isn't the only useful thing in the TARDIS."

"Well, tell me what you need, then, Doctor. I can't help you if I don't know what you're doing."

"There is a device back inside," he replied, his hands busy with the power cables, "called the Chameleon Arch."  
\---

**Today**

"Does it really make you that uncomfortable, Brigadier?"

He only glanced up at her before going back to whatever he was reading. "I don't know what you're talking about, Miss Shaw."

"The idea of me alone in the lab? Only you keep sending Corporal Smith to come check up on me." She found that she gave the name a note of sarcasm without even intending to; such was its obvious falsehood. "I assure you, if I'm in need of assistance from any of the fine upstanding men of this organization, I shall not hesitate to send for them myself."

He sighed, affixed his signature to the bottom of the document on his desk, and looked up at her. "I thought you might be interested in how he was doing, considering."

"I trust Benton to take care of him. He isn't exactly in a high-risk situation at the moment, anyway."

"That's the problem," He said, hands clasped in front of him. "If we have to mobilize, I won't be able to keep him out of action. I'll have no good reason to."

"You really think it's necessary to shelter him? Mr. Smith seems quite able to take care of himself."

"All the same, I'd rather not take any unnecessary risks with him. But," he rose from his chair, "that's not why I called you here."

"Oh?"

"Benton has informed me that – oh, that must be him." There was a knock at his office door. "I'll let him explain it. Come in, Benton!"  
\---

**One Month, Two-and-a-quarter Days Ago**

The Doctor explained to them, as he disappeared into and out of the TARDIS, that the Vadiil could take over the brains of sentient beings. Some, in the past, had taken over another organism permanently, abandoning their shambly bodies. And, being unable to travel timespace on their own, any given Vadiil would likely leap at the chance to inhabit a Time Lord's body and hijack his TARDIS.

The fact that neither said TARDIS nor its pilot functioned properly apparently did not factor into this. But he ignored Liz when she tried to raise the point, and it appeared to be lost on the Brigadier and Benton (whose presence the Doctor had specifically requested; to what purpose, she wasn't sure).

Normally, he would be able to navigate around the flighty Vadiil, jumping ahead of them by a few weeks until the creature became bored with waiting and went off to search for another body. There were obvious problems with that plan, so he had arrived at a Plan B: use the Chameleon Arch to become a human being, stay that way for about six or seven weeks, and hope the alien wandered off in the meanwhile. Even if it did find him, he'd be as useless to them as any human being.

It lacked something as far as plans went, Liz considered, especially since the human Doctor would have no idea who he was and the Doctor they knew would be stored in some sort of fobwatch device. Which they, of course, had to take care of until the human him came looking for it again; when he did, it would mean that sufficient time had passed and he could safely come out of hiding.

It was not the best plan he'd ever come up with.

Lethbridge-Stewart, for his part, appeared to agree with her, voicing his objections whenever he could get a word in.

"I don't see why any of this is even necessary, Doctor." He protested, as the Doctor adjusted the power couplings. "Are you quite sure there's no other way to get rid of this thing?"

The Doctor looked up from his work for a moment. "My dear fellow, you relinquished that opportunity the moment you hauled its body into your headquarters. The consciousness will return to its body before long, and then there'll be no way to avoid it."

"Well, couldn't we just dispose of the body? Leave it somewhere else?

"Disposing of its body will only make it desperate for another." Apparently satisfied with his most recent mechanical fiddling, he opened the TARDIS door. "Besides, we simply haven't that kind of time. It could return to its body while you're busy carting it away. Benton?"

"Yes sir?"

"The human me will most likely be," He paused, pretending to try to disguise the distaste in his voice, "UNIT personnel. Kindly make sure I don't do anything stupid while I'm indisposed." With that, he shut the door; there was a 'click' as the lock slid back into place.

The three of them simply stood there at first, not sure what to make of the sudden end to the Doctor's explanations. After a few moments the grind of old machinery and a noise like a buzzsaw leaked out from behind the old police box's door.

An hour or so passed; the Brigadier and Benton eventually tired of waiting and went back to work, so she was the only one to greet the slightly dazed man in a UNIT uniform who walked out of the TARDIS. He looked a bit different – his face was more youthful, his hair paling blond instead of gray – but he was the Doctor. Or, at least, he had been.

It took some time after that for the details to emerge, but emerge they did. His name was Corporal John T. Smith, born in Weybridge on March 14, 1935 (that explained the face, at least) to a Mr. James and Mrs. Ada Smith. He was an Army man, seconded to UNIT, and an engineer or mechanic of some sort before his enlistment (he gave details, enumerated and precise; she didn't bother to remember them).

He was pleasant. He was polite. He smiled. He made the occasional, abortive attempt to straighten out his hair. He followed his orders promptly, tended to whistle when he was bored, and pursed his lips a bit when he was concentrating. He called people "sir" and called her "Miss Shaw" – never "Liz" – and tended not to use words like "preposterous" or "incompetent".

And he was human. Purely, guilelessly, verifiably human. One pulse. She'd checked.   
\---

**Today**

"Well?" She asked, after Benton had been given the at-ease command.

"He's started to bring up the watch, Miss Shaw." Benton replied.

"And he's wondering where it is?"

"Not exactly. Mentioning it is more what he's doing. I think he thinks he's lost it." There was a sort of logic, she had to admit, to Smith serving under Benton; at least that way, someone who knew him could keep an eye on him, and would know what to do if he started chattering on about fobwatches. Still, it seemed peculiar that everyone else in the section had managed not to notice the shocking resemblance between the Doctor and Corporal Smith. Liz currently had three theories about that: the TARDIS had created some kind of perception filter; the Doctor was as yet not so familiar outside the scientific wing as to be immediately recognizable; or he just looked that much different when he wasn't in his frills and opera cape. She favored the first theory. "I didn't ask for it back since he hasn't started to look for it yet, but I thought you should know about it anyway."

"How long do you think it'll be?"

"No way to tell, I'm afraid. But he only mentioned it once, just before we got off shift. I haven't heard him talk about it today at all. I figure he's got a good bit of time left."

"No news from your side, Liz?" The Brigadier spoke up. "I thought by now you'd have us some sort of timeline."

"Not really." She looked innocently in his direction. "I can't know for certain that the Vadiil's moved on unless the body starts registering motion again, and it's done nothing. I could check it, if that would make you feel better, but I doubt the Doctor's entirely clear yet."

The Brigadier gave a strained smile and looked down at the floor for a moment. "Checking it might be a good idea. I'll send two men with you; let me know if anything's changed since your last observation." He took a key out of his pocket and headed back to his desk. "Dismissed, Sergeant Benton."

Liz was just about to turn and leave as well, but behind her she heard the rustle of paper, and a muttered "Wait a minute."

"Something wrong?" She peered over her shoulder.

"I had the watch in here." He rummaged through the contents of his desk drawer. "I'm absolutely certain I did."

"You didn't _lose_ it?"

"Of course I didn't lose it!" He protested as she strode over. "I haven't opened this drawer even once since I left the watch in it."

"Did you look in the back?"

"I'm looking in the back." As he responded, he reached back to the furthest corners of the desk drawer, shuffled under papers and key rings.

Sure enough, no watch.  
\-----


	2. In Which Sgt. Benton Has a Good Memory, and Miss Shaw Makes a Discovery or Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Liz investigates a disappearance, while Corporal John Smith has something on his mind.

_On occasion, I dream that I am locked in a very small room. Not even a room, really – more like a cupboard. There's a tiny window high on the west wall, and through that window I can see – _

_I don't know exactly what it is. Every time I look through the window, the view changes. Sometimes what I see is terrifying. Sometimes it is unspeakably beautiful. But I can only see it from behind the window. And even when it's at its most nightmarish there's nothing in the world I want more than to reach out the window and touch it, know it, be a part of it again._

_On the north wall there is a simple door. I don't know if it's even really locked. But I can't remember how to open it. _

\---

"Did anybody else know about the watch?" Lethbridge-Stewart was in an ill mood; understandable, Liz thought, given recent events. She suspected he also wasn't fond of the idea of someone else in his office, poking around his desk drawers while he wasn't present.

"I've told no one, anyway. So long as you've told no one either, that leaves Benton." Liz leaned on his desk. "Does that seem like the sort of thing he'd do?"

"No. He knows the Doctor. If he said to keep it secret…" He shut the desk drawer hard, rattling the pens and papers inside; she could tell he was tempted to slam it. "Nobody else knew where it was. Nobody else even knows what it is!"

Liz hesitated. On some objective level she understood the Brigadier's faith in his men's loyalty; for all the hierarchal authority and obedience, any military organization of this size and nature was based, to a degree, on implicit contract. That didn't make it any less frustrating when she found she couldn't share that faith. Not that she suspected Benton – he seemed trustworthy enough, from what she could tell – but one had to consider every possibility, even the unpleasant ones.

"If it makes you feel any better," she said, "he may not have known he was doing it."

He looked up at her, not appearing to understand. She continued, "We are dealing with a creature that can take over a man's mind, Brigadier."

She did not mention that it could also have taken over either one of them, stitching their memories shut behind it and leaving them oblivious. She also did not mention that the easiest way for it to get into the Brigadier's desk was to take over whoever had the key.

One had to consider every possibility. Even those one would really rather not.

Judging by his uneasy expression, he'd followed much the same chain of reasoning. "You think it knows about the Doctor?" he asked. "There'd be no point in taking the watch if it didn't."

"I don't know. I suppose it must not have known about him before. The Doctor wouldn't have bothered hiding if he didn't think it'd do him any good."

He leaned forward on his desk, fingers laced, and looked conspicuously out the window. "Go and check on the body," he said, after a few silent moments. "Make sure _that's_ still there, at least. Once we know where we are, we can figure out what to do about the watch. I'll call up the Sergeant."

Any other day, she'd have protested that she was perfectly capable of driving a UNIT jeep, that the body hadn't moved for near of a month, and that she didn't need a chaperone, but now she was too busy considering (surely she'd have noticed? Surely she'd have remembered, if that thing had taken up residence in her own brain?) to summon up the energy for an argument.

Instead, she only nodded. "Be better if it wasn't there, really," she said on her way out. "At least we'd know it wasn't in anybody else."

\---

Liz wouldn't have believed it, if you had asked her just a few years back. If you'd told her that there were secret testing grounds tucked away outside London where the bodies of aliens were carefully sequestered and observed, she would have laughed and made the safe assumption that you were joking, or, if you were not, that you were an unreasonable conspiracy theorist with whom she had no business.

So, naturally, the Vadiil's body had been buried at just such a site – a dismal spot, out past miles of brush and undergrowth, with nothing to distinguish it save a cordon (rigged with an alarm) and an unobtrusive pit, hung over with weeds, where the alien body lay. Not even any guards, to prevent it from possessing anybody on its way out. Were she not facing the prospect of Corporal Smith as a permanent instalment at UNIT, she might have been amused.

The body hadn't even been fully secured; it had exits for when it woke again. But the transmitter she had placed under its skin was as sensitive as possible in a device of that size, and she would know the moment it chose to leave its confines.

So it came as something of surprise to her that the Vadiil's body was nowhere to be found.

She checked her readings again; the transmitter still gave a clear signal from the same spot where she'd left it the first time, as near as she could tell. Puzzled, she paced the centre of the test site, running one gloved hand over the dimple in the dirt where the body used to be.

A few searches turned up the remains of the transmitter, half-buried in the soil and nearly intact but for a few dislocated circuits. At this close range she could see the small waver in the signal, lost over the distance back at UNIT headquarters. The transmission was only slightly compromised; whoever removed it had done so delicately, so as not to cause alarm.

Liz had been careful in her preparations. She was alone in the lab when she performed the surgery, the incision was small and unobtrusive, and nobody else had been told precisely where the transmitter was.

Perhaps, then, the Vadiil had already re-enervated its body and gone off in search of another host. It could, theoretically, have removed the transmitter itself. She'd kept it as far as she could from any major nerve centres (such as she could identify with the neurons floating about in an independent cloud), but it still could have felt the machinery under its skin.

In which case it was over, then; the thing had wandered off just like the Doctor said it would. Mission accomplished; time to open the watch and get back to work. Or it would have been if they'd had the watch, anyway.

Liz stood up, turning the device over in her palm. As if she could be that optimistic in these circumstances – as if she could afford to be. Besides, if the Vadiil had just taken its body and went off in search of new prey, why would it bother to remove the transmitter? More to the point, she thought as she looked back down at the stirred-up earth, why had it removed it so carefully, leaving it intact and replacing it almost exactly where it had been before? It hadn't just thrown the device away in the woods; it had hidden from them, covered its escape. If it hadn't been for the Brigadier's comment earlier, she might not have checked it for weeks.

Quite possibly this creature was not quite so absentminded as the Doctor seemed to think it was. In which case his entire plan was built on a flawed premise. After all, this was the second time in only a day that events had failed to unfold as predicted.

Or perhaps not, and the Vadiil had simply walked away. Proximity of events did not dictate relation.

She got back in the jeep and began the ride back to UNIT HQ.

\---

That watch was greatly detracting from his enjoyment of the game.

He hadn't thought about it much at all until yesterday; in fact he had forgotten it entirely until then. But since then it had become a preoccupation, cluttering up the corners of his mind while he was trying very hard to think about something else.

If he could only remember what he'd done with it. That was what bothered him, more than anything else. It had been a gift – _the_ gift, given on the last day he'd seen him – and he'd apparently lost it. And the worst part was, he simply couldn't think how.

They'd parted ways, and he'd tossed John the watch, and...and he'd kept it, until eventually he didn't have it anymore. There was that long, puzzling blank in between.

He had told him he wouldn't forget.

Someone elbowed him in the arm. "You feelin' all right, Smith?"

"Hmm? Yes, yes, fine." No matter how long he'd been lost in thought, Manchester's (that was the one in red, wasn't it?) score remained at a discouraging zero. "Why, what happened?"

"The ref's an idiot is what happened," Browning interrupted. "How was that a foul? He barely even _touched_ him! Blind bastard."

"You've been funny all day, Smith," Morrow ignored him. "Off in a whole 'nother world."

"I suppose I have been," he replied, leaning back away from the telly. "But – have you ever known you know something, and just not remembered it? Like having a name on the tip of your tongue."

"All the time. Forgot the wife's name once. She never let me forget _that_."

John paused, searching for a more adequate phrase, because it _wasn't_ like forgetting a name, not really. With little things like that, you knew it would come back eventually – the loss was momentary. But this new memory had filled in a space he didn't know was even there, and now that he'd explored it he'd found it full of cracks and holes.

Before he could pursue the thought any further, Sergeant Benton opened the door. "All right, you lot, time to get moving. We've got a job to do."

"Another retrieval?" Browning reluctantly looked up from the game.

"That's what it looks like."

"Christ," Browning grumbled, shutting off the telly. "What hasn't fallen from the sky these days? You comin', Smith?" he finished, jogging his elbow.

"Hey, who knows," Morrow added, rising. "Maybe this time we'll actually get aliens, eh?"

\---

Benton had taken to Smith's presence a bit easier than the others (the Brigadier actually started laughing the first time Smith saluted him, though he'd at least waited until he left the room), but that didn't mean it hadn't been a strange month.

The funny thing was, nobody else seemed to notice him. Benton thought he'd have to explain everything, introduce Smith and make excuses for his familiar face. But Smith had settled right in, calling everyone by name, making conversation like anybody else. It was as though he'd been there for months.

And that had helped, somewhat. It was easier not to pay him any particular mind if nobody else did either. John Smith was just a perfectly nice chap from Weybridge who happened to look like the Doctor; the Doctor was still back in his lab somewhere, absorbed in his work and deaf to the world.

But over the past few days, there'd been reminders. Only small ones, but reminders still. About a week ago on off-hours, he'd found Smith focusing rather intently on his coffee mug; when interrupted, he'd asked Benton if he'd any idea what a time flow analogue was. A few days after that he'd gone off on a bit of a rant about how the spaceships on the program they'd been watching were all wrong ("But if they have the structural integrity for space travel, why do they just up and explode after two days on Earth? I'm telling you, it doesn't make any sense at all.").

And then, yesterday, after they were dismissed for the day, he'd mentioned somebody.

"My friends and I were at a party," he'd said; they were all swapping tales of their misspent boyhoods over drinks. "Brilliant party, all singing and dancing and all that – and, you know, I don't even know how it happened, but before you know it I woke up on the runway of Gatwick Airport!" The rest of them laughed, but he wasn't finished. "Well, I barely had a moment to get my head clear before we all had to start running. They had the police out on us, you see."

"Did they?"

"They did. So we all had to get up off the tarmac and start running – all of us still dizzy, still not entirely sure where we even were, running all over the airport. And two of us, Jamie and I, we ended up in one of the terminals where a plane was coming in from...it was Zurich, I think. Only they wouldn't let us back into the airport because we didn't have any passports."

"So what'd you end up doing?"

By that point he was laughing himself, just a bit. "We hopped on the next plane to Germany! Or we would have, if the captain hadn't run us out. After that, we had to rely on a _charming_ young lady we met at the airport – Sam, I think her name was..."

He had wondered, at the time, how much of it was real – if any of it was real at all. He recognized the name _Jamie_ from the last time he saw the Doctor (the other Doctor, the first one), but it was a common enough name. He might not even be talking about the same person. Strange coincidence if he wasn't, though.

"...and we eventually got the car back. Had to wander around for a bit looking, but we got it back," Smith concluded, leaning back with a smile.

"Lucky you did." Morrow cut in, picking up the thread. "There was this one time in Cardiff – me and my mates got out of the car for five minutes, right, and then when we came back..."

And for a while that seemed to be the end of it; Smith laughed along when Morrow recounted his tales of missing cars and strange men in greatcoats, and didn't say anything more about Jamie. But he didn't say much of anything else, either. He seemed as if he was trying to listen to two conversations at once, catching only just enough to understand. Once they'd left their table, he went almost quiet.

In fact, he barely seemed to notice when the signal came. Benton had to nudge him to bring him back to reality. "Penny for 'em, Smith."

"Hmm?" Smith startled, looking up at him. "Sorry, sir," he said, rising from his seat. "Lost in thought for a moment."

"Looked it, too. You all right?"

"It's just – something's been puzzling me all day. You see, this friend I was talking about – Jamie – before he left, he gave me a gift. A pocketwatch. It had engravings on it. I didn't remember that until just now."

"Where'd he leave for?"

"Back to Scotland. He was born there. I haven't seen him since." Smith pursed his lips slightly, looking puzzled. "Can't recall what I did with that watch."

Scotland. The Jamie he'd met during the Cybermen's invasion had spoken with a Scottish brogue. Perhaps Smith really was talking about the same person. But why would a real person be in a false memory?

And of course Smith couldn't remember what had happened to the watch; it was locked in the Brigadier's desk at the moment.

The Doctor had told him, before he used the Chameleon Arch, that his human self would come looking for the watch when it was safe for him to be the Doctor again. That would be the sign that enough time had passed, that the bodiless brain had moved on in search of other prey. John Smith had never spoken of a watch of any sort before – hadn't even mentioned Jamie, come to think of it – and now here it was, something he'd remember and want to find again. Maybe John Smith was nearing the end of his days.

The thought stopped him for a moment. He knew there wasn't really a John Smith, that it was the Doctor all along – it was impossible to forget, looking at him. But he acted like a human being, with a whole life he thought he'd lived; he talked like an ordinary man. It was strange to think of him suddenly not being there anymore.

It was probably time to start getting used to the idea.

For the rest of that day, and thus far today, he hadn't really spoken to Smith, save to give him cursory orders; Smith, still lost in thought, hadn't seemed to mind. Even now he was quite still, paying absentminded attention to the chatter around him as the truck bumped and jolted on the ill-maintained road. Benton could only assume that the watch was still on his mind.

The impact site was still smoking faintly when they reached it, despite the lengthy drive; dust from the collision still hung in the air. Considering the size of the crater – easily wide enough for one of them to lay down in – Benton was a bit surprised to see it contained no more than a vaguely round, nondescript lump, about the size and shape of a rugby ball but slightly more pointed at one end.

Smith seemed as unimpressed as he was. "Is that all?" he asked, walking up next to Benton. (When he furrowed his brow it was easy to forget he _wasn't_ the Doctor.)

"Looks like it."

"You never know," Morrow shouted, unloading the scanner from the back of the van. "Kick it. See if it explodes."

After scanning the strange meteor (the smoke had disappeared by the time they finally unfolded and set up the equipment) and determining that there was in fact nothing explosive, poisonous, radioactive, biological, or otherwise dodgy about it, Smith grabbed a pair of gloves from the kit and picked it up without much effort at all. He hefted it experimentally in one hand.

"Weighs practically nothing," he noted. He moved to throw the object to Benton, who spread his hands out to catch it. Browning stepped between them, arms up, hoping to run interference, and Smith feigned a dodge around him before placing the object in the crate, shutting it behind him.

\---

In situations like these, Liz always found it best to be forthcoming.

"It's not there."

Lethbridge-Stewart turned to face her; she'd caught him in a corridor, on his way somewhere. "You mean it's escaped?"

"I thought that was implied in 'it's not there', yes."

He tapped his swagger stick impatiently against his palm. "Isn't that what we were hoping for?"

"Not exactly. It left the transmitter inside the containment field."

"And?"

"It left it exactly where it was in the containment field. It removed it and left it where its body had been. If I hadn't gone to check the site, I might not even have known the body was gone."

He seemed to catch on, clenching his free hand around the end of the baton as if there were no other way to stop the tapping. "It knew we were tracking it?"

"It looks that way. And it wanted to cover its escape." She checked behind her back to ensure that no one overheard her. "I don't like it, Brigadier. This thing isn't behaving the way the Doctor said it would, and now that the watch has gone missing too..."

He nodded. "I'll take a squad and sweep the area around the test site. If we find it, we'll bring it back to HQ."

"I'll go with you," she started, as he began to walk away, but he cut her off.

"Not this time, Miss Shaw."

"I hardly think this is the time for –"

"If the Doctor _is_ wrong, then we don't know what that creature will do if it does turn up. One of us needs to be out of its immediate range."

"And what if you need my help to –"

"You're in the rare position, Miss Shaw, of not knowing any more about this thing than I do," he said, apparently humourlessly. "There'd be no point in you putting yourself at risk. I'm sorry," he added, as she prepared to tear a hole in that particular excuse. "My mind is made up. I'll contact you after we finish the initial search."

With that, he turned on his heel and left before she could protest further. For a moment Liz considered following him anyway, but she had to concede at least part of his point. She wasn't quite sure where Benton was at the moment (out on assignment?), and if two people present knew certain vital information, it probably didn't make sense to send them off on the same mission.

Which was still preposterous, because nothing was going to happen to him. She'd examined the creature herself; there was nothing especially dangerous about the body. Of course, there was still the mind to consider...

Uneasy despite herself, Liz returned to the lab.

\---

_There are other dreams, of course, with other backdrops besides the empty cupboard, but few that I remember. One, in particular, came back just a few days ago._

_I am sitting outside with him, watching the stars, reminiscing. We can name every one of them, because they all have a story to go with them. I don't remember the stories when I wake. Sometimes even during the dream they start to slip away from me, and I look up and see nothing but space, huge and dark and empty._

_And then he points up at some faraway sun, and says "We had such great fun there, d'you remember?" And I do._

_For a while, that's enough – just naming and remembering. But soon he grows bored with that; he wants to know where we're going next. And I can think of no new destinations for him, nowhere that doesn't have a story to remember it by. "We're not going anywhere", I tell him._

_"What d'you mean we're not going anywhere?" He looks at me, props himself up on his elbow._

_"I don't know where we're going."_

_"Oh, ye _never_ know where we're going," he says; it seems to cheer him up. "What's so different about that?"_

_"It's not like that. It's – I can't –" I want to explain to him the blank in my mind, but I barely understand it myself, and all I can think about is _I should have told you, I should have warned you_. (Warned him of what?)_

_He gives up with a frustrated shake of his head and settles back on the grass. "Hurry yourself up, then. I've not long before I have to go back."_

_"I know," I reply; the words feel heavy, for some reason, final. "You'll have to go back home."_

_"Ah." He shakes his head. "Back there, it's not home. I mean, it is, I suppose, but..." He shrugs, and looks back up at the sky. "Could we not go back to Rome? I liked Rome." _

_"Jamie –"_

_"Whatever happened to that watch I gave ye, John?" he asks me. "You've still got it, don't you?"_

**Author's Note:**

> While the new series has the Chameleon Arch transforming the Doctor into a human duplicate of his Time Lord self, I aged human!Three down a bit, even though it's never states that the Arch can do this. I figured that the Arch must already change a Time Lord's physical age lest it create a 900-year-old human, so knocking a few years off said Time Lord's appearance wouldn't be too far out of the range of its probable capabilities. Smith's only a Corporal; a Corporal in his late forties would look a bit strange, even coming out of the Army. And if the Arch can give him a history and a personality to suit his situation, shouldn't it give him an age to suit his situation as well?


End file.
